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JackCain · (04-20-2017)

**It's dawn. The sun peeks slowly over the horizon at a dockside somewhere in New York. No one is around. The distant hum of traffic the only sound that can be heard. The camera zooms in slowly from the wide view to a car that's parked on the edge of a wharf, just in front of a wooden pier. Jack Cain is sat on the car's hood. He sips from an unmarked bottle of water, an empty silver wrapper is screwed up next to him on the hood - a half-eaten K-ration nestled inside.**

Used to come here when I was a kid with my old man. We used to fish - or we'd try. Never caught a damned thing. Didn't realise when I was that young, that nothing lives in this water. It's dirty, it's full of oil, and shit, and crap you flush down the toilet. But I said to my dad, I wanted to fish, so he'd bring me here, with a hook and line and we'd sit for hours talking, about mom, about me, about him. Never about the fish.

Years later, I asked him, "why'd you keep taking me there?", and he just told me, "because you asked me to,"

Broke my heart.

He knew I wanted to go fishing, but he knew he couldn't afford the gas to take me anywhere, so he just made me think I was fishing, and it made me feel better. It was all about perception. All about what you thought was real.

And as you go through life, you begin to realise that everything isn't ok. However much you try to disguise it, reality just keeps seeping in. All those times my dad took me fishing didn't help me when he died. Didn't help my mom when she died. Didn't help me when I tried to ask a girl to marry me and I found out she'd been fucking another guy. Didn't help those guys I went to Afghanistan with who got their legs blown off by IEDs, or got shot by a sniper a mile away.

You see all that, you start to realise that no matter how many times people tell you it's alright, it isn't.

And the sad part is I began to resent my dad. I wished he'd taught me from the beginning that it wasn't ok y'know. I wished he'd said to me "Sorry son, there ain't no fish in that bay, go play in the park."

But he didn't, he gave me hope, and it's the hope that gets you in the end. The hope that eventually, somehow, you'll be alright, that things will work themselves out, and that no matter how tough things get, you'll still catch that fish someday.

It's all shit.

**Cain gets off the hood and moves to the trunk. He opens it and take sout a huge cloth bag, chained at both ends. He hefts it over one huge shoulder and closes the hood. He walks down the jetty.**

Cos when you believe it'll be alright, you get sloppy. You might think that you're gonna come out on top, cos you shout the loudest, you scream at the top of your lungs that you're the big, bad monster and everyone should start runnin'.

But if you believe that, you're wrong.

You get to the end, the very end, and you realise it don't mean anything anymore. You look into the eyes of the man who is going to take away all you are, all you've been, and everything you ever could be, and you know, that you've fucked up, and it was the hope that kills you.

So...

**He reaches the end of the jetty, dumps the bag in the water and the chains quickly drag it under the surface**

If you think you'll be ok, and I won't find you and make you pay for what you've done in life...

**He stares at the sinking bag**

I don't care if you're a damned gangsta, "Super" Mario, I don't care if you're a punk kid with something to prove Harris, and I don't care if you're some genetic freak Ultimate, point is, there's no hope for you. After all...

**The bag disappears from view under the surface**

There wasn't any fish then, there still ain't any now

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode It's the hope that kills you...
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